Ask a Philosopher: I often get questions in emails about my blog or books. I have been replying to these on email but decided I might also start posting answers as part of a series “ask a philosopher.” Who wouldn’t want to ask a philosopher something?
Question: Does the 1st Law of Thermodynamics say that energy is neither created nor destroyed? Doesn’t this mean that energy is eternal?
Reply: The 1st Law of Thermodynamics is about energy conversion. It says that in an isolated system the total amount of energy remains constant during energy transfers. It doesn’t make any statement about the origins of matter, energy, or the universe. But, once there is matter, hot and cold interact to become sameness, and in these transfers energy remains constant. There is not a creation of new energy nor does any energy go out of being. Combine this with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which states that entropy is increasing and we have a sound argument that the material universe has not existed from eternity.
An example of a view which says that matter is continuing to be created is the Steady State Model of the universe. Developed by Fred Hoyle in the mid-20th century, this model states that the density of the universe remains steady due to the continual creation of new matter. This is in contrast to the Big Bang Theory and is not popular even among materialist cosmologists.
Therefore, the 1st Law of Thermodynamics is a law about how energy behaves in our observations. It is not, nor could it be, a statement about the origins of being.